BRITISH
BLUES CONNECTION

RORY
GALLAGHERNO
MORE MESSIN’ WITH THE KIDA personal
tribute by Scott Duncan

In a very
direct way if it wasn't for Rory Gallagher there wouldn't be a
Blueprint magazine.

Back in
1970,
a friend of mine returned from the Isle Of Wight Festival raving about
a rock band he'd seen called Taste. The band's front man had
astonished my pal not only by playing blisteringly fast and fluent
guitar, but also and this was the real novelty, by playing a saxophone,
which he whipped from behind his back whenever the need arose.

Even in
those days I was ever ready to fail to be impressed by the exaggerated
claims made on behalf of musicians (plus ca change etc.), but this Rory
Gallagher guy did sound intriguing. I decided to check him
out. Thus it was that, in early 1971, as a sallow faced 18 year
old, the first ever rock/pop event (the terms were interchangeable
then) that I went to was a Rory Gallagher gig in the August
surroundings of The Queen Elizabeth Hall on London's South Bank.
Taste had split up by this time (for that story, see Trevor Hodgett’s
piece elsewhere in this issue) and, anyway, it was always Rory who
inspired most interest. His sidemen post Taste at various times,
drummers Wilgar Campbell, Rod De’Ath, Ted McKenna and Brendan O’Neil,
Lou Martin on keyboards and faithful servant Gerry McAvoy on bass could
have been trained chimps for all anybody really cared.

After that Queen Elizabeth Hall gig I instantly
became a fan of Rory’s. I even began wearing similar clothes to
my newfound hero. In an age when tie dyed granddad vests, satin
loon pants with enormous flares and sandals were all the rage, you
could find me in a 92p (18s/6d in real terms, but we'd just gone
decimal!) blue checked lumberjack shirt from Milletts, a pair of
drainpipe Levi's and a cheap pair of plimsolls.

Rory was my
man! My first axe hero! And I began to attend as many of
his gigs as I could possibly get to. I was lucky that I lived in
Reading (not too often you hear people say that) and could see him
quite often. Throughout the Seventies, Rory regularly headlined
the town's annual rock festival (he's featured on 1973’s “Reading
Festival” live album alongside contributions from the likes of Strider,
Greenslade, Status Quo and The Faces - all bands who today mean nothing
to me and didn't mean too much more to me at the time).

What I now
know, but didn't know then, was that my love affair with Rory Gallagher
was a response to the honest spirit of the blues that was an integral
part of his music and live shows. Even then it was obvious that
he was musically more sincere, and certainly more talented, than the
likes of Black Sabbath, Uriah Heep, Wishbone Ash et al, whom we
provincial fledgling hippies and cultural crits all went down to see at
the old Reading Town Hall when they passed through town. In an
age of musical charlatans and phonies, Rory was somehow for real.
You could always rely on him to put on a value for money show.
His gigs regularly lasted at least two and a half to three hours, a
work ethos that he was promulgating long before Bruce Springsteen was
hailed for the longevity of his stage act.

And it was
Rory’s live shows that really mattered. The first three studio
albums, 1971’s “Rory Gallagher” and “Deuce” and 1973’s “Blueprint” were
really only worthwhile having as souvenirs of the tunes from them Rory
played in live concert: scorching guitar favourites like “Laundromat,”
“Sinner Boy,” “Used To Be,” “In Your Town” and “Walk On Hot Coals.”

If anything,
the definitive Rory Gallagher album was recorded as early in his career
as 1972 when “Live In Europe” came out. It's a perfect snapshot
of what a live Rory Gallagher show was like at the time. Seven
classic live cuts showcase his potent mix of blues rock. Side one
opens with “Messin’ With The Kid” and “Laundromat,” two balls out blues
rockers that generate nuclear levels of excitement. “I Could've Had
Religion,” a slow blues, shows his skill with the slide guitar on the
white Telecaster that was as much part of his act as his famous paint
stripped Strat; ending the side, “Pistol Slapper Blues” (an old Blind
Boy Fuller number recorded way back in nineteen twentysomething or
other, as Rory tells us) represents the acoustic segment that was
always an important aspect of a Rory Gallagher live act and shows his
phenomenal picking technique. On side two “Going To My Home Town”
displays Gallagher’s versatility and ability to play almost any
stringed instrument: it's a mandolin tour de force that regularly
brought the house down, especially when Rory inserted the name of the
particular town or city he was playing in into the lyrics. It
never failed to astonish that he could get such stirring riffs out of
such a tiny and tinny instrument. Ending the LP are “In Your
Town” and “Bullfrog Blues,” the latter probably Rory’s most requested
number over the years: a blues rock guitarfest that regularly induced
audience frenzy when played as an encore or rousing finale to Rory’s
live gigs.

There were
further albums of course (one a year up until 1982’s “Jinx”) but, to
belabour the point, it will always be his live work that Rory Gallagher
is remembered for. (Indeed, you could argue that “Live In Europe”
and 1974’s “Live Irish Tour” are the only albums you need to possess if
you want to know where he was coming from musically.)

Rory
Gallagher lived to the full the life of the traveling, performing
bluesman, emulating heroes like Leadbelly, Blind Boy Fuller, Big Bill
Broonzy and Muddy Waters, whose 1972 “London Sessions” album he
contributed to. From the early Seventies onwards, right up until
his death, he was constantly on the road gigging, a permanent fixture
on the UK and European concert and festival circuit. He toured
the US several times, too, but he never really cracked it in the land
of his blues heroes. So much so, in fact, that the 1992 edition
of The Rolling Stone Album Guide fails to list any one of over 20
albums he put out in his lifetime. A sin and a shame. A
slur and a calumny.

Mentioning
blues heroes, it was through seeing names like “Wells,” “Broonzy” and
“Williamson” credited on Rory’s LPs that I first really became aware of
the blues and thus started the long retrospective march through blues
history which, in 1988, eventually led me to Memphis, a chance meeting
with Paul Jones and the foundation of the British Blues Connection and
the establishment of Blueprint magazine. But again that's another
story.

I have to
confess that I somewhat lost track of Rory in the late Seventies and
early Eighties. I still caught the occasional show, but his
playing seemed to be concentrating more on his rock, rather than his
blues influences, a reversion to his Taste days and by then
that kind of music didn't interest me. However, in 1987 he
released “Defender” which featured Mark Feltham on harmonica.
Around this time I caught a show at, I believe, Reading's Hexagon
Theatre, which demonstrated that Rory had returned to a more, mellow
blues sound. 1990’s “Fresh Evidence” continued the “back to the future”
approach and I, for one, was back on board.

The last
show I saw of Rory’s was at the 1993 Portsmouth Blues Weekend.
Headlining the opening Friday night, he pulled out more punters for his
one appearance than showed up for the rest of the weekend, testimony
not only to his great drawing power, but also to the genuine affection
in which he was held.

After the
Portsmouth gig the Production Editor and I had the great pleasure of
being introduced to Rory, meeting him briefly in his backstage
caravan. He was genuinely interested in Blueprint magazine and
was “well chuffed,” as they say, when I explained to him that it was
through his inspiration that the magazine and the blues society had
come about.

A few months
later I was lucky enough to meet Rory again at a special press
reception held at London's Hard Rock Cafe to celebrate the launch of
the film and book tie in for the 50th birthday of the Fender
Stratocaster guitar. To my astonishment, he picked me out of the
milling throng of hacks he had remembered me from Portsmouth and asked
me how I was getting along and how the magazine was doing. I was,
and this isn't too strong a word, awestruck. I’d hero worshipped
this man for almost 25 years and here he was, modest, quietly spoken
and almost bashful, asking after my well being. To say it was a
special moment in my life one I’ll remember forever is an
understatement.

On the two
brief occasions that we met, we discussed the possibilities of doing an
in depth interview for Blueprint. It was something that Rory was
genuinely keen to do. However, we could never find the same
windows in our schedules, despite several phone calls to his manager,
brother Donal, and it wasn't to be a missed opportunity I’ll always
regret.

Rory played
his last live show in Ireland in his native Cork City at the Regional
Technical College in November 1993. His rendition of “Going To My
Hometown” moved many people in the audience. Little did they
realize that this would be his last appearance on home soil.

In many
respects, Rory Gallagher was an unsung hero. His deliberately low
key approach to his art meant that he never really received the
critical acclaim afforded to the likes of British contemporaries like
Eric Clapton and Peter Green or white American blues guitarists such as
Johnny Winter and Stevie Ray Vaughan. Nonetheless, in many ways,
through his honest, unpretentious approach to his music and his
willingness to give of himself by his commitment to playing for a live
audience surely the crux of the blues experience he was closer to the
essential spirit of the blues than many of his more high profile
colleagues.

Now he's
gone and, in the words of a song from his first album, 'I can't believe
it's true'. I just can't believe it's true.

Rory
Gallagher, blues guitarist and singer, born Ballyshannon, Co. Donegal,
2 March 1948, died London, 14 June 1995.From the August 1995 issue of
BLUEPRINTThanks to Brenda O'Brien for sharing
and preparing this articlereformatted by roryfan